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Patents: Mathematical machines

27 July 1991

By BARRY FOX

Patent law prohibits creating a monopoly on mathematical theories. So
authors try to dress up theory as mechanical invention.

Randell Mills of Chochranville in Pennsylvania does this in his patent
application (WO 90/16073) for ‘an apparatus and method for providing an
anti-gravitational force’. He says Einstein’s theory of relativity was ‘correct
experimentally’, but ‘based on a flawed dynamic formulation of Galileo’s
law’.

‘The only way to account for the enormous discrepancy between theoretical
expectation and experimental reality,’ says the inventor, ‘is to assume
that the parameters of nature are involved in an extraordinarily accurate
and utterly mysterious conspiracy.’

The nub of Mills’s theory is a novel model for the atom, with particles
in ‘Mills orbits’. Ionisation of an electron makes the orbit radius go to
infinity. This creates antigravity and Mills describes a machine for levitation
and propulsion.

If the international examiners assigned to study the lengthy patent
find no prior publication of similar ideas they will be legally obliged
to grant patents on the machine. This should not, however, be taken as confirmation
that the idea will work as claimed. To prove this, the inventor need only
build and demonstrate a working prototype.